There are multiple crucial lessons learnt in college, job, and in life that I wish were translated into lessons at school. This includes both hard skills, and soft skills. Here is a list of some of them.
Obligatory PS: This list is not exhaustive and there will be a part 2
- Basic first-aid: What to do when someone gets a cut, and when someone gets a burn. What about a cramp, twist, a bee bite, a wasp bite, a deep gash. What to do when someone is badly hurt in urban setting, and what to do when nobody is around. Basic hygiene in various settings. Learning about symptoms and causes of typhoid and malaria is fine, but these things are at least as important, if not more. I wish there was a group exercise in groups of 5 where these things were practiced in class.
- Basics of a clean diet in an Indian context: Today, the world knows much more about macro-nutrients, good habits, a good diet. Back in the day, there was hardly any information. In my school and college, a few people like me were obese, and most of my classmates were underweight. There were very few people who had a perfectly fit body. Our diet back then was very very unhealthy.
- Crucial Conversations: Negotiation, people management, and conflict is something that people often struggle with. There are some professions, hobbies, and activities where this is learnt fairly quickly, but some people take a really long time to learn the basics. It is something I have taken time to learn.
- Basics of economics in terms of freedom, consent, incentives, market failure, and positive sum thinking: This is a deep insight that is difficult to do justice in one paragraph. But it was this economic lesson which helped me change from a person who would randomly believes noise in articles and news to someone who could actually think about the world in terms of consent and incentives, and that all of this is related. a) 2 people should be allowed to do anything as long as it doesn’t cause harm to anyone else. This applies in economics and in personal life. b) There are 4 forms of market failure, and crime is one of those — because if I hit someone, I am free to do as I please, but I am infringing on someone else’s consent. Monopoly is a second market failure. c) People respond to incentives, and there are second order effects. If the law is too harsh, instead of being incentivised to follow the law, people might prefer bribing their way out. d) A consensual and fair trade is a positive sum interaction and a double thank you moment. The buyer is better off because the commodity or service is more important to them than the money, and the seller is better off because the money is more important to them than the service.
- Identifying and preventing bullying and abuse: This is dark, but important. In hindsight, multiple activities of school kids were various forms of bullying and abuse, and not just childish playfulness. In fact many activities of school teachers were clearly abuse, not discipline. A proper framework to identify, call-out, stop, and report abuse would be helpful, especially to kids of that age.
